Wool-gathering on a Friday morning

 I miss shoe stores.

When I was a little kid, we would buy shoes twice a year- before school in September and as Summer approached. We had two pair of shoes: school shoes and play shoes. In summer we got sneakers and sandals.  Do you remember looking at the shoes, having the clerk measure your feet with the Brannock Device and then sliding the shoe, ever so carefully, on your foot? it was.. magical.  I have a friend who said her daughter called going to the shoe store her Cinderella Day.  I guess it was.

I miss Payless Shoes.  You could go in and look over racks and racks of shoes, try them on and walk out. My feet don't always conform with the size so I need to "try before I buy" -getting shoes online is a pain in the patoot!  I also suspect that like most women's wear, shoe sizing is not true to anything and more like a vanity size than the real thing ( ooohh I wear a size SIX)

When I was a teen, I shopped endlessly in Malls.  My mom would sit down with me at the start of the school year to see what I needed and what my budget was.  Because I knew our finances were tight, I gave her the closest estimate I could.  She let me keep whatever I didn't spend BUT I had to buy everything on my list.  I was usually pretty close.

I am getting to a certain vintage.  I am not yet at the cane-waving GET OFF MY LAWN phase of life, for starters I don't HAVE a lawn- but  I miss things from my childhood. . I miss the slower pace.  Today everything seems so sped up ( do you find yourself YELLING at the microwave to "hurry up I don't have all minute"  ???) I miss Thrifty ice cream counters   The ice cream man coming down the street. Playing baseball in the street ( yelling CAR when one came slowly down the street I lived on a small street and everyone who lived there knew we might be playing in the street.  I live in a small apartment building now and I have made an effort to know my neighbors.  When I was married the first time, we lived in a house and barely knew our next-door neighbor but as kids in the 60's we were in and out of each other's houses all the freaking time.

I miss that.

What do you miss?

Books, Grief and memory

 On this day in 1981, My friend Laura E. Hernandez passed away from Lupus. It wasn't the first time someone I knew died, but this one hit me between the eyes.  Part of me knew she was dying, but part of me was firmly in the land of Denial. After all we were in our early 20's and people our age don't die from illness. 

But she did.  

Her life was such a spark.  Someone said she was an angel walking and I suppose that's as close as you can get to a description.  She was human sunshine, a fierce friend and a genuinely good soul.  I think she must have completed her mission here  I think of her often- I went so far as to give her middle name to my daughter.  I can't hear the Christopher Cross song "think of Laura" without sobbing- which is the antithesis of what the song tries to do.  I often think of what her life would have been like if they had the medical knowledge they do now. The memory of her life and the sweet, fun times we had overtakes the sadness.

Timing sucks, but I am currently reading the Newberry Award Winner "all the Blues in the Sky"  about a young girl whose best friend in killed by a hit and run driver while on her way to see her.  I'm about halfway through the book. I keep having to put it down.  It deals with grief, guilt and anger in a way teens can understand ( this is a book for Young Adults)  It is well written- it Is A Newberry, after all!

It got me thinking about people I knew who died when I was a kid.  Car accidents, household accidents, shot by police, suicide.  I did have a neighbor who was about 19 who had a viral infection that attacked his heart.  He was super healthy and athletic.  I never understood that.

As I get older, I find I am going to more funerals or memorial services. It sucks but it is a fact of life. I try to think of it this way, mourning a death means I got to celebrate a friendship. There is an expression from the Jewish tradition, which I have adopted as it means more to me than the traditional Christian platitudes like "they've gone to a better place" or "Heaven needed an angel"  ( don't start me on that, since I FIRMLY believe that humans do not transition to angels)  They say "May their memory be a blessing" It aligns with what I often say May the joy of their life soon overtake the grief of their passing. It works for me.

As I remember my friend Laura today, I will Share a poem she once put on a scrap of paper in my work inbox:

From Emily Dickinson

To make a prairie (1779)

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

That says mor than I just said.

Bad Bunny is an American

 I watched the half-time show that was making MAGA heads explode , even before they saw it.  MAGA was all "HE'S GOING TO SING IN SPANISH!!!"  HE's NOT AN AMERICAN!!!" ( spoiler alert, they have been citizens of this country since 1917- even if Felon47 doesn't know that)

I gave up trying to understand him- my Spanish is terrible and he was singing too fast for my ears to catch up- and I let the music and the visuals just wash over me.  There were sweet surprises around every corner.  I am fairly certain MAGA fainted dead away when he said God Bless America in English ( fake outrage "How could he say that?? that phrase belongs to us!!!")

The only thing more powerful than hate is love.

I woke up this morning with a song I had learned as a child playing in my head. When I was in elementary school , we had this woman who came infrequently to give us music lessons.  She played an autoharp and taught us mostly patriotic songs, with a few songs written by folk singers who were not so patriotic ( Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger)  but his song- which I maybe misremembering went like this :

This is my country

Land of my birth

This is my country

Grandest on Earth

America stands for freedom

Americans are we all

So this is my country to rise and to fall

Anyone out there remember it or did I make it up?

We were taught that America was the best country in much less jingoistic terms than MAGA.  We were taught "Give me your tired your poor"  We were taught we were a great melting pot.  We were taught "E Pluribus Unum" From Many- one

The thing in the White House is trying his best to tear that apart. He had a lot to say about Bad Bunny, and I wonder if he watched it or did he watch Kid Rock sing about having sex with minors- a subject near and dear to the Pedo-in-Chief's shriveled heart?

I would like to believe that the average American is starting to see what he is: a sad, vengeful creep who is trying to destroy the country.  Sun Tzu is credited with saying "An Evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes."  I believe we are looking at that man every day.  But is see the cracks forming. I see courage in the every day.  I continue to hope.

The only thing more powerful than hate is love.

asthma attack

 I had an attack at 3 this morning. 

Here is what it felt like 

The tickle begins

but I know better than to drink anything

Pant, tongue out

No.

Sit up 

Pant harder.

it might be stopping

No.

Stand

Now Chris is awake

Questioning.

I lean over the stair rail still panting

Getting worse but so far My throat is still open

I can feel it starting to close

Fear rises

I push it down

Fear will not help in this fight

Focus

Chris stands on the edge of my vison

There

I shake my head

This is MY fight

Pant 

Hard

My body starts to clear the airway

Violent but necessary

Air

and the feeling releases at last.

Shaky.  I sit down on the edge of bed

Take a precautionary puff of the inhaler

Talk to Chris

Fall exhausted back to sleep

I don't DO resolutions

 I don't DO resolutions.  Resolutions are often unattainable, so I set intentions.

This years, I intend to be happier, look for the glimmers, be kinder. 

Day Two, I've already blown it.

A person who went out of their way to be cruel to me, to ruin my life when I would not bed to their will is in the final days of their life.  I am remembering not the things they did before they decided I was worth destroying, wondering if the nice stuff was just a way to suck me into their plans. I will not say what they did to me, but after I escaped they went all scorched earth, trying to ruin my reputation. What they did not see was I no longer cared what those in her circle thought of me.  If they knew me and believed the lies well that was on them.

Still as they lay dying in hospice, probably non of their children keeping any sort of bedside vigil, I think negative thought ( I just did it here, so you see where my brain is)

I need to work on this version of "Forgive and forget" I'm gonna forgive them , then forget them. They mistook my kindness for weakness.

Still working on living my intentions.  It's harder than I thought!

Day 24

 

The ice cream store

I went to as a little girl

with my grandmother

closed

My grandmother always got Bing Cherry

I got rainbow sherbet

They sell the brand in the grocery store nowadays

but I doubt they even make Bing cherry anymore

and I never see rainbow sherbet

I think of my grandmother

and things that disappear

when you aren't looking.

Day 23

 

Remembering things

that are no longer there

I close my eyes

try to smell it

taste it 

touch it

to be in that place for that moment

back in that long forgotten time

in  the bubbles of my memories

that burst

and leave me 

emptier than I was before